


Making New Dreams

by howling_roosters



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, M/M, Original Character(s), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Slow Build, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-12-25 22:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 9,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18270722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howling_roosters/pseuds/howling_roosters
Summary: Set right after the Avengers: Infinity War Part 1.Tony Stark is blessed by Hope. But he's always been better acquainted with misery. So he uses the blessing the way he knows how to (and maybe helps more than a few people along the way).Or, Tony Stark is a beacon of light that makes everything brighter.





	1. Chapter 1

Being stranded in space wasn’t new to Tony Stark. But he could do without losing his entire team. Best not to dwell on that too long. He had Nebula. He should be grateful for that much, he supposed. It was hard though, to feel anything but grief right now.  


He should have seen this coming. He was a futurist. He should have done more-he should’ve saved Strange (it shouldn’t have been the other way around)- and the kid, Parker, oh god-  


A hand on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. He tried a weak smile at his blue companion, “I’m fine. Really.”  


She scoffed, “Thanos just wiped out half the universe, Stark. Nobody is fine,” her mouth twisted into an ugly line, “ Nobody should be fine.”  


He nodded and exhaled, “Right, of course, it just-well-he knew my name.” Why me? Why not anyone else? were the unspoken words that hung in the stiff air. The nausea from confusion and despair were filling up inside of him. That, on top of the survivor’s guilt and anger he felt made for a violent cocktail that threatened to make him sick enough to puke his guts out.  


As appealing as the prospect was, it was impossible now. He could be nothing but the peak of human health as long as the Extremis Virus was running through his veins. Speaking of which, his servers were offline. He couldn’t detect any signals despite the abundance of spaceship that had crash landed around him and that was worrying because his tech was the best in the freakin’ universe. That much, even Thanos couldn’t rob him of. He thought aloud, _Friday?_

**Yes, boss?**

_You’re still in there?_

**Amazingly enough, yes. Sir, if I may, -**

_I should get off this planet ASAP?_

**Well, yes.** There was a hesitant pause. **My diagnostics of the infrastructure surrounding you are coming up blank. As you know, I was barely able to keep up spacial calibration during the fight. The tech on this planet seems to be hampering my functions.**

That was admittedly worrying. His mind decided to take a moment to focus on the disaster of a fight that had been the Guardians and himself trying to stop Thanos - but Thanos had only been playing all along, humoring them with violence because he knew that nothing could’ve stopped him. It had been unnecessary to put up any resistance, Tony thought with anguish, since everyone died anyway.  


He knew his entire inner monologue hadn’t taken but two seconds, yet Nebula was looking at him curiously. Oh, there was a tear on his face. Guess Extremis didn’t cure that.  


Before she could open her mouth to offer any platitudes, he stood up and brushed off his undersuit.  


“Well, as shitty as this ordeal has been, I’d say we get a head start on ending it. I’m going to be heading back to Earth to build a bomb big enough to blow that bastard back to hell and politely ask him to refund everyone’s life while he’s at it. What’dya think?”  


Nebula’s lips curved into a smile. And wasn’t that the ugliest thing he’d seen - but there was enough rage in her eyes to burn a star out. He fought the instinct to take a step back and met her eyes instead.  


“I think that’s a terrible plan Stark. But if you’re up to it, you should know I’ll be with you every step of the way.”  


“Good decision,” he said, “After all, Thanos isn’t the only one cursed with the knowledge to bring destruction.”  


It wasn’t a start. They both knew it was a hopeless shot. But he’d be loathe to give up on his promise to avenge the Earth - and now the universe - from his worst nightmare. 

\-----

Nebula did not understand why he wasn’t terrified of her. Tony did not know how to explain his friendship with the Black Widow. So, instead, he said, “ I have experience with daughter’s of death/harbingers of terror, or whatever catchphrase it is that you use.”

She seemed to accept this. Or perhaps she had decided she would just kill him in his sleep. It was hard to tell her expression when her prosthetic eye kept glitching and popping out of its place.  
And because he was Tony Stark, and he had no impulse control or sense of self-preservation, he asked, “Hey, do you want me to take a look at that, -” he gestured to her dysfunctional eye- “I could fix it.”

The glare she gave him after him after his question left him no doubt that, yes, she was going to murder him in his sleep. After she was done pushing her eye back into place. 

He held his hands up in surrender and took it as his cue to begin working on the spaceship they had salvaged from what had most likely been a military base of Titan. Friday, god bless her soul, spoke up from his wrist watch to clarify his intention, “Mr. Stark, while appearing to be of little use, has several PhD’s, including ones in mechanical engineering and theoretical physics. He possesses the skill-set to reliably understand and work on the interface that makes up your auditory and visual senses,”

Nebula was at his throat before Friday was finished. “Who was that?”

Tony whistled as much as he could while being choked, “Someone’s got trust issues. That’s Friday,” he pushed her arm off using the repulsors in his gauntlet, “Friday say ‘Hi’.”  
“Hi,” His speakers made a crackling sound suspiciously akin to a snort, “I’m Mr. Stark’s AI and more importantly his voice of reason.”

Tony wasn’t sure whether it was the fact that his AI had a personality or that Nebula felt bad for choking him that made her pry her eye-socket-thing (EST) off her face and hand it to him. He wasn’t going to question it.  
It only took him a moment to figure out that he needed to weld one of the wires that had been torn during the fight. But since he didn’t have his workshop (his heart ached at the thought of home), he improvised the process with a precision beam from his repulsor. He fiddled with it for a few more seconds before deciding that now was not the time for upgrades and handed the EST back to her. She didn’t seem to be surprised that he worked fast so she must have taken Friday’s assessment of him. He allowed himself a small smile when the EST stayed in place and Nebula nodded her thanks.  
\-----------------------------------

It had been a few days since Thanos had stranded them on the ruins of his old home. Tony was using Extremis to create and store blueprints of even the most rudimentary technology on Titan. He was determined to take any data that could possibly be used against Thanos. It helped that he was utterly fascinated by all the new tech. He was surprised by all the things he hadn’t thought of yet. 

Nebula seemed to know her way around machines. It went with the ‘I’m a strong-independent-assassin-woman’ vibe. It also made sense she was almost a machine herself. Tony would have to ask about the story behind that when she wasn’t on the verge of murderous rampage a la grief. 

Between the two of them, they had built a spaceship that was half alien tech and half modeled on the designs of the quinjet, just in time for Tony to feel a pang of hunger. The Extremis virus had delayed that, but now that he needed food he couldn’t help noticing the absolute lack of it for light years away. Shame that sustenance did not come in the form of innovation for mortals. He had a few more hours until he would feel the effects of dehydration. Tony guessed he could hold out for 12 more hours. Deadlines always made him reckless. This time was not going to be different.


	2. Chapter 2

Nebula could safely say that in all her shenanigans across the universe, she had not encountered a man like Stark. He was singular in his bizarreness. He was a genius. She’d seen many of those. That was not what made him unique.

  


He was a whirlwind of energy. He did not stop moving - as if he was afraid some shadow would creep up to cage him into deadly stillness if he did stop. And she didn’t need to observe him long to see that he wasn’t afraid for himself, but for the people that he needed to protect. So when he said that he was part of a team called the Avengers, she understood that his duty was to be a hero.

  


“What about you?” He asked as they were getting their spaceship off the ground. “What spandex wearing group are you part of?”

  


She looked at him consideringly.

  


“I’m Thanos’ daughter,” Nebula finally said, “I was his perfect weapon. And then he killed my sister. So now, I’m going to be his worst nightmare.”

  


She sensed that Stark had stiffened in his pilot’s seat next to her. She knew he was warring with himself over the decision to bring the armour out for a fight. Exhaustion must have won out because he shrugged and settled back into his seat.  
She had hoped to mask her surprise but he caught it anyway.

  


“Nebula,” he started seriously, “I know I may not look like it but I’ve lived long enough to know that even the best of us are part monster. It doesn’t mean that we have to let that part rule us. All anyone can do is to try to defeat the worst in ourselves. It’s all I ask of you. It’s all I ask of myself.”

  


Nebula knew a veiled threat when she heard one. But she couldn’t have felt more respect for Stark if he had defeated her in hand-to-hand combat. Ofcourse, the grave moment had to be ruined by a gurgling sound that erupted from his stomach. The last few days had stripped too much of their humanity for them to be able to laugh but they managed a smile over the situation.

  


“Well,” Tony tried for cheer, “Unless you’ve got some protein bars on you, I’d say it’s time to make that quantum leap and get us to Earth.”

\---

Tony felt himself lose consciousness as they made their first leap. When he came to, he was sitting alone in the spaceship and he could see tree branches on the windshield. Not a smooth landing then. But where was Nebula?

  


Panic surged through him at the thought that she could be dead too. Maybe Thanos had snapped his fingers again, and decided to be done with sentient life for good. Maybe he had decided to let Tony live alone in this hell. Maybe - 

The flip phone fell out of Tony’s pocket as he stumbled blearily out the spaceship. Tony blinked at the piece of black plastic. How had it survived?

He picked it up warily, very suspicious of the fact that the wasn’t damaged save for a single long crack across it’s screen - only cosmetic damage as far as he could tell. He had installed it with a custom made Stark battery (custom made only because his company didn’t deal with date technology, not out of any significance to the device itself), but this was more than he had expected from the ancient tech.

The pale blue light of the screen greeted him as he flipped open the cover. Three missed calls. Tony nearly fell to the floor. Steve was alive. Hesitant hope and relief filled him and he let out a manic laugh. No, now was not the time for relief. He had to call Steve, reassemble the Avengers, save the day, and defeat Thanos. Easier said than done. Tony didn’t even know if any of the Avengers were alive. And if they were, surely they wouldn’t accept him open-armed after all that had gone down between them.

The decision to contact them was ultimately taken out of his hands when the phone rang again. His finger had moved to press accept before he could think about it.

“Stark?” Steve’s voice filled his ear, “Stark is that you? Tony? Tony we need - are you alive?”

He sounded concerned. Stressed, even. Yeah, that was definitely Steve. He cleared his throat.

“Hi. Yes. It’s me. Tony Stark, the one and only. What can I do for you today?” Tony joked, surprising himself when his voice came out even.

“Tony! _Sonofa_ -” Tony heard a clang -something dropped on the floor- and a string of fervent curses, “You’re _alive_.”

“Right back at you Cap. Good to hear your voice,” Tony realized that the end of the world had ruthlessly stripped him of his filters, “Though I’m kind of starving.”

There. That last part was in a jovial enough tone to not reveal the fact that he would drop back into unconsciousness from dehydration any moment now.

Steve chuckled (it sounded more like a sob but who was Tony to judge?). Tony had run out of things to say. What could he say? That half the universe was dead? Surely, Steve had gotten the memo by now. Should he ask about the team? He wasn’t sure if he was welcome to them anymore. The silence stretched on between them and Tony wondered if Steve was thinking about the same things. This was horrible. It was the apocalypse and they still couldn’t talk to each other. God damn it.

He must’ve said the last part aloud because Steve said quietly, “I think he already has.”

Tony took a moment to process that piece of questionable wisdom and how bad things must have gotten for Steve to lose hope.

“I think,” Tony began with more courage than he was feeling, “That the verdict is still out on that.”

A minute passed with only Steve's controlled breathing audible on the phone. Tony realized that it must have seemed like he was initiating another argument after months of radio silence.

“Tony where are you?” Steve asked finally. 

“Spaceship that just crash landed. Why?” 

“Stay right there.”

“Not like I’ve got anywhere to be,” Tony grumbled to himself once the call disconnected. Despite his words, he felt hopeful. Maybe he had said the right thing after all.


	3. Chapter 3

He didn’t know how long he had been sitting on the floor of the ship when he heard footsteps. He expected Friday to announce their identity and intent any moment now, but when he glanced at his wrist for a watch he found it bare. 

Now would’ve been a great moment to panic except he found that...he couldn't. He couldn’t panic.

  


Not panicking at being out of control was a novel experience for Tony considering how many times he had almost died for it.

  


The footsteps sounded nearer, and Tony could make out a woman’s silhouette. She was bald with strikingly handsome features. For some reason, he wasn't able to pinpoint if she had a great nose or cheekbones, only that she was beautiful. Her eyes were another mystery. They were blue. Not just _blue_ blue - they _glowed_ blue. Tony didn’t know what to make of the fact that her skin seemed to be a kaleidoscope of colors from one angle and a smooth chocolate hue from another.

  


He’d been an Avenger and Iron Man long enough to recognize a deity when he was unable to describe their physical manifestation accurately. But he couldn’t have summoned the energy to pay his respects if he’d wanted. As it was, he was feeling rather disillusioned with any higher power after Thanos had wiped out half the universe, unchecked.

  


“I’m sorry,” she said, because of course she could read his thoughts. He waved a hand- whether to say that it didn’t matter or he didn’t care for her platitudes was unclear even to him.

  


“I’m not what you’re thinking,” she told him, “I’m not a deity. Atleast, not one that anyone has knowingly worshipped.”

  


“Then who are you?” he cut to the chase while trying to keep his mind blank so she wouldn’t glean any valuable information just in case she was malevolent (hippos and lightsabers, Tony consciously thought, hippos and lightsabers).

  


But then she smiled wide and Tony felt his heart lighten despite himself. Again, he couldn’t bring himself to panic even at the realization that she could manipulate his emotions.

  


“I’m a Fundamental Universal Constant,” she revealed with all the flourish one would expect from someone with pretty much absolute power, “I’m Hope.”

  


Hope is the thing with feathers, Tony thought. And while it made sense that this glowing goddess was its embodiment, he didn’t think she had a place in _this_ universe, and much less beside him.

  


She gave him a sad smile, “I do exist. Just as surely as the constant for gravitation or that of energy.”

  


Tony frowned as he thought of Planck’s constant and quanta. Were their personifications this dramatic?

  


She waved a hand and Tony felt the air ripple with the movement, “Call it what you want. But it is what it is. You are a sensible man. You understand that concepts can be real intangible without being unreal.”

  


“Say I accept that hope exists. But how do I know you are it?”

  


She appeared amused, “You have already accepted it. But I’ve known you long enough to know that you won’t concede to my points without evidence. Fortunately, Time has given me some liberties so I can afford to show you.”

  


All trace of humour disappeared from her countenance, “The human brain cannot easily fathom the functionings of the universe. Sometimes, genius or accident reveals some secrets.”

  


An image of a young man with curly hair sitting under an apple tree came unbidden to Tony’s mind, no doubt projected by the goddess.

  


“And then there are some secrets that cannot be entirely concealed, so that any form of life can always conceive a vague form of them - what you call love is one example.”

  


She waved one hand to the side again and this time - silly as it seemed - Tony could _feel_ the Earth rotating on its axis and curving into its orbit around the sun.  


“These things are universal constants. They make the world go round. They should not be tampered with; they exist in abundance and balance simultaneously.”

  


The world stopped shifting under him as Tony processed the information.

  


“Thanos had disrupted this balance. The first way he did so was, obviously, death.”

  


“You don’t actually expect me to believe there’s an actual Grim reaper out there,” Tony snorted.

  


“As I said, call it what you may, it is what it is.”

  


“That’s not a no.”

  


She ignored him in favor of continuing to explain the mysteries of the universe, “This unbalance will have consequences. There are too many dead people who don’t want to be dead. They’re becoming unmanageable. It’s a bit of a mess. Which brings us to the second problem: me. There are too many living that have experienced loss and tragedy.

  


Tony realized what she was getting at, “They’re losing hope aren’t they?”

  


“I’m becoming less... _ethereal_ lets say, as we speak,” she grimaced, “Like I said, I’m not supposed to be tangible in mortal form, much less aware of the fact.”

  


And that statement was going to throw Tony for a loop no matter how many times he repeated it in his head.

  


“But the others won’t listen to me when I say that we must intervene,” Tony guessed she meant other universal constants when she said ‘we’.

  


“They think Time will restore balance as she always has - let alone the fact that Time herself is coming undone under Thanos’ thumb.

  


“We have never faced anything like this. Of course, we’ve had out share of interplanetary, even intergalactic wars. But this is _half of the entire universe_ wiped out. There is not a single soul unaffected.”

  


The weight of the events felt even heavier and graver than before. It was unsettling to know that this was a first because there was no telling if people -from all over the universe- would be able to come back from this.

  


“I am Hope,” the deity reiterated as she filled Tony’s palladium poisoned heart to the brim with that feeling, “I am not wishful thinking; I have a plan and the intent with which to execute it. I am well acquainted with despair; I know the repercussions it can have on the spirit. I know that civilization of any kind is doomed to stagnate and eventually wither away if they lose sight of a better tomorrow. So I going against all convention that had bound my kind for so long; I am choosing you as my champion. You _will_ keep hope alive in the hearts of those you touch because it is your only shot at redeeming the universe.”

  


Tony couldn’t deny the bald woman standing before him was hope. Not when the prospect of bringing back Parker with the Avengers at his side was overwhelming him enough to render him speechless.

  


“I would be honored,” he managed finally, “to champion a goddess that doesn’t play by the rules.”


	4. Chapter 4

Tony was calling the armor to himself before he was fully conscious.. The repulsors fired up at the unseen but felt presence of intruders,

He distantly registered a voice asking him to calm down. Then, all at once, his senses kicked in. He wasn’t in a dream or hallucination anymore. He was back in the spaceship, only now he was surrounded by the Avengers. He winced internally as he thought about how this was the first time he’d seen them since their ‘break-up’ and had pulled the repulsors on them. 

They were all watching him with guarded expressions and hands on their weapons. He couldn’t find it in himself to be threatened by that - not when they had showed up as a united front to find him. 

Well, a meet and greet had been long overdue. Tony forced himself to relax while he pulled up the faceplate, an easy grin on his face. 

“I appreciate the welcoming committee guys, I really do, but you didn’t have to go all out for me.”

  


Tony guessed there would’ve been hugs and kisses at this point if Nebula hadn’t ambushed Thor from behind where he was standing in the cargo bay and forced him to the ground. In one smooth, Steve pulled her off the god and hauled her over his shoulder so she landed on her back with a painful crunch. All guns, arrows, and hammers were pointed at her and ready to strike if she so much as blinked. 

Friday - Tony thought, and his AI disabled 63% of Nebula’s functions with signals that destructively interfered with those she was sending her body. It was quicker to immobilize her than to explain to his team why they should stand down. Which he proceeded to do next.

  


“She’s not a threat.” All eyes snapped to him. Really, it was shaping up to be a perfect day for deadly misunderstandings.

  


He held up his hands in defense, “Look, she came back here with me as an ally. I think she can help. She just has some extreme trust issues because - oh.”

  


Friday’s systems finished updating information from all networks on the ground so Tony found with overwhelming certainty - “Pepper’s dead?”

Tony had never seen the Black Widow as sympathetic. Her expression right then was a close approximation (he would’ve laughed at how odd it looked at another time). Thor was already stepping forward to hug him. Everyone looked torn enough that he knew they’d suffered as much as him.

  


It was Steve that spoke up over the harrowing silence. “Rhodey’s waiting for you back at the tower - he’s been, well,” he trailed off uncertainly.

  


He didn’t have to finish. Tony wanted to be with his best friend as soon as possible but he was in no shape to fly over the Atlantic in his suit from where the spaceship had crash landed in Norway. Besides, there had never been a better time to accept help. 

He walked over to where Nebula was frozen on the ground and kneeled besides her. Her eyes were wide with panic.

  


“Sorry about that,” Tony grimaced as he released her, “Didn’t want to take any chances.”

It dawned on Nebula in that moment that her companion had been capable of rendering her motionless even when she had first tried to choke him. She watched him carefully as her offered her a hand to stand up. She dismissed the thought that he had been playing her into thinking him less capable than he was so he would have the advantage of her underestimation. No, he was just trying to keep her trust - a dwindling resource off late. 

She took the proffered hand and gave him a slight nod. Nothing more was necessary to convey her acceptance of his actions. He gave her a tired smile and introduced her to the team.


	5. Chapter 5

It was late into the night when the quinjet finally landed on the roof of the tower. Tony could make out Rhodey’s silhouette - it was a sight for sore eyes.

Tony was glad his best friend understood what had transpired without him voicing it. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to explain. 

“I have to call May,” Tony said after they hugged, his voice turning hoarse, “And tell her, tell her -that-” 

“Already did that when Friday updated me,” Rhodey said softly.

He guided Tony to the kitchen on the common floor. Tony noticed everyone else had left to give him a measure of privacy in his grief.

“May told me to tell you the following in no uncertain terms,” Rhodey said as he poured a glass of water for Tony )he knew he would have to push his battered friend for rest but he wanted Tony to hear this first), “‘Peter was a smart and capable boy- even though he was just that, a boy. So don’t you dare tarnish his memory by taking the weight of his death because he knew the risks right from when he took on that ‘internship’ with you’”.

Rhodey watched as Tony blinked once. Twice. Then several times in succession to stem the flow of tears he hadn’t allowed himself so far. One drop made it past nevertheless. 

It sparkled as it fell to the countertop table. As it made contact with the glass top surface, the tear imploded in a spark of electricity that made the air smell like warm...sugar? Honey? Cinnamon? Rhodey couldn’t place the scent to save his life. But there were more important things to address, like, “Tony? Do you want to talk about any updates to your nanite tech that make your tears smell like an air freshener?” 

But Tony was sniffing the air with as much rigor as Rhodey, his expression of melancholy replaced with one on curiosity. “About that, I may have been blessed by a deity of hope.”

Rhodey’s eyebrows shot to the sky. “Of course,” he said aloud. It was time for Tony to take a nap if the mechanic was relating air fresheners with deities. As he guided Tony to his room, the sweet scent made its way through the tower, seeking people to affect.


	6. Chapter 6

Tony stuck to his story even after half a day of rest and three full meals that Rhodey insisted on. Thor believed him. That wasn’t exactly helping his case.

Tony flattened his palms against the glass conference table in the meeting room they had assembled at. Everyone was sitting around it -save for Steve. Steve was pacing the room with his eyes trained on the floor. 

“What,” Tony gritted out, “is it about my encounter with divinity that seems improbable to you when there is one sitting right here with us?”

“Maybe the part where you might have been delusional from lack of food, water, and perhaps even oxygen,” Natasha deadpanned. 

Tony gave her a sarcastic smile, “I think I’d know what kind of hallucinations my brain can cook up. This wasn’t one of them.” 

Tony wasn’t lying. He knew Natasha could see he wasn’t lying (he truly did know what kind of hallucinations he was capable of having. They would never be ones that encouraged him to be _more_ of himself. And they would _absolutely not_ tell him he was worthy). They were playing this game to convince everyone else. Clint could see through it but he was interested enough to keep from calling them out on it. 

“The only other objection you could possibly have,” Tony went on, “is disbelief because I’m talking about a higher power. But I’m not saying I met God with a capital G - if anything this was more Thor’s brand of god, who we know to be real.”

Thor nodded at Tony, “My father, Odin, would tell us of deities even older than him. Those deities existed before the universe. According to him, the universe wasn’t created by them; rather it was of them. What you said about universal constant - it sounds similar.”

Steve huffed and shook his head, “Only you, Tony, would become optimistic after an apocalypse.”

“Tony narrowed his eyes at him, “This isn’t optimism, it’s the-”

“Then what else would you call it?!” Steve exploded before he could finish.

Tony was taken aback by the outburst. He looked over to Natasha. This wasn’t how the conversation was supposed to go. She looked just as alarmed - Steve’s calm had been a tried and tested constant. 

“You - You’re talking about hope, and love, and - and the grim reaper for god’s sake! You’re implying we could bring back the dead or make things like they used to be! That’s not optimism; it’s wishful thinking!”

Right, Tony thought, sore subject. But everyone had lost someone. And Steve was making it very hard for him to keep his cool. What with all the stuff about unresolved differences and thinly constructed truces. 

“I implied no such thing. I’m only saying we could consider the possibility that there is help - even if it is in the form of an intangible idea - and maybe look at receiving it,” Tony tried calmly. 

Steve stared at him as if he’d realized something. “You want to try your hand at wizardry because you think you’ve been granted access to it.”

Tony was getting impatient. “This isn’t about magic, Steve, it’s about making a plan that isn’t just a suicide mission in the guise of revenge.”

Steve was stretched just as thin. “We can’t risk everything on your gut instinct,” he snapped back.

Tony could tell Rhodey wanted to intervene and stop them but didn’t quite know how without blowing things up further. Bruce looked uneasy, as did most everyone in the room. 

“On the contrary,” Tony stepped into the rabbit hole, “We _can_ risk it. We have nothing left to lose.”

Steve joined him, taking their argument into its usual downward spiral, “Oh and you clearly have good reason to be confident that Thanos won’t wipe out the remaining fifty percent of life.”

“And you clearly have good reason to think we’ll defeat him out of sheer uncoordinated, unplanned brute force the second time we try it!”

There were both standing up now, itching for a fight to hash out their differences. Only the fact that the Black Widow would have bullet holes in the both of them before anyone threw the first punch was preventing them.

“You have no _right_ ,” Steve’s tone was low, “You never called to tell us what was coming, even though you knew.”

Tony snapped. Literally. One moment he was angry enough to tackle Captain America without the aid of his armor and the next his vision had shifted beyond the color on the visible spectrum. 

His mind supplied him with an image of the bald woman with blue eyes. The hope that he’d felt with her filled him again. His reality shifted as if an illusion was being lifted. He could see the mess of swirling back tendrils floating underneath Steve’s skin. The tendrils were cool, he knew it, and he was scorching hot despite the climate controlled conference room of his tower. 

He instinctively pulled the icy ink towards himself like a magnet attracting metal. It seemed to resist as if with conscious effort. But he needed the cold to down the fire he was feeling. Tony tugged harder, unsure of what he was trying to achieve or how it was happening. 

This time the tendrils slide out of Steve’s skin like a sketch slipping off of paper. They floated lazily across the room, trying to reach out to another body but Tony drew them into his chest, where his arc-reactor glowed bluer than ever before. His vision slowly returned to the regular human spectrum of colors (and that was never something he’d had to consider before).

The only signs that he hadn’t hallucinated were Thor’s frozen stance as he’d made to summon Mjolnir and of course, Steve leaning for support on the nearest chair. Natasha looked confused and that meant Tony was going down in the Guiness Book of World Records.

His own confusion was enough for him to make a dash for his workshop but Steve blocked his path. Tony hated mind-reading frenemies. 

“What did you just do?” He asked, out of breath, “And how?”

“Magic,” Tony deadpanned because so what if the world needed a united team of heroes, what _he_ needed was to be petty and hold a grudge. 

“Tony,” Steve sounded frustrated, “Why do I suddenly feel, uh, less..."- _less like a bull in a china shop bent on breaking every truce I come across and more like the me I was before the war tore my world and soul apart_ -...angry?”

No. No, he really didn’t need to be petty. Tony sighed and looked into Roger’s earnest face, 

“I’m not sure how I did that. All I know is that it’s connected to what the deity-lady told me about the imbalance of hope and misery, and life and death. _Righting_ the imbalances is our ticket to bringing Thanos down. I’m just not sure how,” Tony admitted.

Clint held his ears, muttering about discussions being ‘too deep and weird for 7 am, man, I have a child to feed’ while Natasha’s expression cleared. 

“Well, I guess that settles it,” she said,”Everyone’s dismissed. Eat. Rest. Clear your minds. We’ll regroup at 1300 hrs. Obviously, we need to decide how to proceed.”

The fact that no one questioned her authority was a testament to the effect she had on people. 

Rhodey walked over to Tony. 

“I always believed you,” he said playfully, “But that was a heck of a way of getting everyone’s attention.” Tony cracked a smile and scoffed.

“I’m going to be in the workshop if you need me, I’ve got to fix Nebula’s eye.”

“Nothing’s going to stop you from skipping meals, is it? No amount of near death experiences will keep you from that, will they?” 

“Dummy makes me smoothies,” Tony offered. It was Rhodey’s turn to scoff. 

“Well, I’m making a sandwich without grease and motor oil in it. I’ll have Friday send some down to you.”

Tony blew him a kiss and went on his way.


	7. Chapter 7

After fixing Nebula’s eye, Tony got down to the real business. He needed to holistically understand all that had happened before, during and after Thanos’ invasion, compile data on losses incurred, and factor in hope into all of that. 

The first two tasks weren’t too bad. For a given definition of too bad. Living a nightmare from different angles to grasp just how bad it was, wasn’t too bad. 

But the losses were so staggering that Tony didn’t know where to start. He sorted them into categories of human death (3.5 billion approx.), ecological damage (virtually none), financial repercussions (stock market had crashed two hours after the attack, DOW index was lower than it had been during the depression), social (sense of community was fading-could you really blame people?), and the list went on. There were so many factors to be considered. Tony had 57 categories (85 if he counted by subsections), and he was sure he was leaving hundreds of things out. The world was such a hot mess from the fallout of the invasion that it was almost unquantifiable. Almost. 

Tony Stark did not take the mantle of genius lightly. 

But hope was another issue entirely. He might even be completely out of his jurisdiction. He wondered what he had been thinking when he agreed to help the -deity? Goddess? - Oh, right. She could manipulate his emotions. He hadn’t been thinking. With his brain anyway. 

So when he had tackled all his other problems, he worked on his armor. 

He would've gone on in that vein until meeting. Then he noticed a baby attempting to climb onto his design station using the handles on the drawers of his workstation. He thought the baby would fall but it managed to haul itself upright onto the desk using the plate Tony was restructuring to prevent it from going beyond elastic deformation (Thanos had stabbed him right there, he wasn’t going to let him get lucky a second time). Tony blinked at the baby and the baby offered him a crooked grin sans many teeth. 

“Uh...Friday?”

“It’s a baby, boss,” she said cheerfully.

“I can see that. What’s it doing in my lab?” He asked warily.

“’It’ has a name,” She told him imperiously, “Nathan is Clint Barton’s third child. He is Hawkeye’s only surviving family. He entered your lab through the ducts. I did not think that the standard protocol for dumping pink hair dye on anyone trespassing the air ducts would be appropriate in this case.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it,” Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, “Now you’ve made me feel guilty.”

He heard a put upon sigh that was far too clear for an AI. Then, a human voice said, “This is ridiculous.”

Tony turned carefully around the room for the source before rounding on the baby.

“Uh.” He was being very articulate today. He couldn’t help himself; he was facing a baby that had its armed folded and was sitting ramrod straight with a world-weary expression. And its eyes were glowing blue.

“I mean, I knew humans are weird, and that granting you my senses would be a risk. But this? It’s ridiculous.” Baby/goddess shook her head condescendingly. 

“I gave you _my_ senses - the ability to spread hope or to nurture it. You’re a magnet to misery! You pull _misery_ away from people!”

Tony made a valiantly attempted to not take offense, failed, and fell back on sarcasm. 

“Oh, I’m very sorry. I _completely_ forgot to upload the protocol for borrowed divine powers of hope to Friday’s servers. I’ll just get to that!”

“You do that,” she nodded in approval, “I gave you the ability to see the most superficial layer of the soul that inhabits bodies. And since you were supposed to be my champion, you were supposed to be able to discern and manipulate _hope_.” 

She leaned forward and squinted at him with her glowing eyes as if trying to read his mind more clearly, “But I suppose you are unlike all champions before. You see reality in shades of both: the red blood it is marred by and the gold that glitters within.” 

“Are all of you this dramatic? Or is it just you? Coz if you are, I’m looking forward to hell a lot more, all of a sudden.”

She grinned at him with Nathan’s half-formed teeth, “You’re odd. I think I like that about you. Go blow up the world with your ideas, my unlikely champion.”


	8. Chapter 8

Tony was more confused about his ‘borrowed’ abilities after that conversation then he’d been before. 

Hope had sounded more amused than angry about the way he was handling his powers, anyway. Maybe she had meant to be encouraging in a ‘you do you, weirdo’ kind of way.

Well, Tony didn’t know any other way. A realization hit him. 

The reason why he wasn’t able to find a way to fix the world was because he was looking at too many variables, too many details. Potential solutions would solve one specific problem and worsen many others. 

That wouldn’t do. He couldn’t take the big picture either right now - that would be unmanageable. Besides, Thanos’ attacks had started personal, surgical. He was trying to solve things the way a Director of SHIELD, or a President of a utopian African country, or an acting CEO of Stark enterprises (his perfect Pepper) would. All of whom were dead now. He was alive though, and the would have to do with him. 

Baby steps, thought Tony. Conquering the world back to give it to the people would require baby steps. 

And the first step would be to build the Avenger’s a helicarrier sweet and sleek enough to make them all want to unite for its own sake - a middle path between the big picture and the small details that only he knew how to take. He cleared his station of all other projects and brought up a fresh blueprint to run his ideas wild on.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Fake science ahead.

Steve was sowing his punching bag back together. It was a mess of patches by now. But putting it back together gave him a better sense of calm than taking them apart did. 

He recalled the time he’d first moved into the tower - and the rate at which he’d gone through bags. Tony had walked in on him destroying one, stared at him, and walked right back out of the gym. 

The next day he’d found a new punching bag and a spool of what had first seemed to be wool. JARVIS had explained that Tony had synthesized. An energy absorbing polymer just for this purpose and provided extra spool of the materials so the bags wouldn’t have to be replaced as often (how he’d known that Steve knew sowing was anyone’s guess). 

 

And now, amidst the biggest crisis of all, Tony had simply pulled away the mess of terrible emotions (Steve had caught a glimpse, just for a moment, when it had finally broken away from him) that had been getting darker and harder to check since - since well before the war. 

It was so absolutely characteristic of Tony to randomly go and get blessed by a goddess of hope. Steve felt irrationally angry at him. But it was a dull, small kind of anger, easily extinguished without years of bitterness to fuel it. 

Nothing like what he’d felt moment ago when he and Stark had fought.

As Steve finished a last stitch on the bag, he made a decision. The team had been fragmented by too many blow. Many of which he had delivered, he thought with a grimace. He would sow them back together. He had been trying to lead them with good decisions and great strategy. That had worked with his troops in the war. But he wasn’t dealing with mortal humans anymore, and he wasn’t leading a fight against them either. He would have to change tactics. He needed to be better this time. He needed to lead with trust.


	10. Chapter 10

Certainly, rock bottom was the best place to start when you only wanted to go up. So there Steve was, at the entrance to Tony’s lab, asking Friday for access to it. 

When the glass doors opened for him, he thought there might still be a god after all. 

He’d planned what he was going to say, how he’d clear the air about their past... _misunderstandings_ , and how he’d ask for another chance to work together. 

Well, best laid plans and all, they went out the window as soon as he stepped into the workshop and was greeted with the sight of a hologram being hurled his way. 

He caught it on reflex, and curled his palm around it where it twirled for a few moments, even though it wasn’t tangible. 

Steve opened it up (it had been balled up like paper before, presumably designed that way so Tony could have the satisfaction of chucking his projects into the virtual trash can) to reveal a blueprint. 

“What do you think?” Tony gestured to the blueprint, casual as all hell, as if they hadn’t been read to break into a fight that morning, “You think you could fly in that?”

“It looks like a manta ray,” Steve blurted, because he was too surprised that Tony was already working on building a helicarrier for the team -did this mean he was still on board with the Avenger’s initiative?- to say anything else. 

Tony pulled off his safety glasses and gloves as walked towards Steve, “Well, leave some mystery for me, Sherlock.”

Steve ignored the jab in favor of asking, “Do you think you could add something on the wings of the carrier to secure someone on the outside while it’s in flight?”

Tony gave him a look that wasn’t full of disdain so Steve took it as a sign to go on (he felt vindicated that he’d read this situation right, that it wasn’t Tony expressing professional courtesy as much as it was an olive branch). 

“Because this design of yours gives plenty of room for someone like Clint or Natasha to be positioned on the outside - provided they have something to secure them- and that could be useful if we need to gun down someone on the ground. Or on a rooftop. Or even an entire planet, as we leave its stratosphere.”

There were a few beats of silence as both of them thought of their respective battles with Thanos, and opportunities they had missed. 

Tony finally cleared his throat, “Yeah. That could be useful. I’ll see about incorporating it into the design.

“But there is a reason why it looks like a manta ray. I, uh, I brought back some of the tech from Titan. And it had some interesting features…” Tony walked over to the far end of the lab and opened a drawer of the desk DUM-E was charging next to. He pulled out something that looked, for all intents and purposes, a sword. 

A sword with jagged edges near the hilt, loops that knotted further ahead, before a straight deadly looking tip. Tony gave it a flick and whole assembly flattened before folding itself like a hand fan.

Then, as if to prove that the show wasn’t over yet, the material compressed upon itself until the lines distinguishing the folds were gone and there was only a shiny metal brick the size of an eraser left in Tony’s palm. 

“It, it condenses?” Steve was confused. He’d seen some pretty remarkable things during his time in Wakanda, but this was definitely not from Shuri’s lab.

“Close,” Tony said, then shook his head with a grin, “No, actually, that’s completely off the mark. See, the first part - when it folded itself, that’s mechanical. Nothing too special, that can be achieved with some well placed nanobots. But the last stage, when it compresses itself - well it only looks like it compresses itself because it doesn’t actually get any denser. Here, hold it.”

Tony dropped the bar into Steve’s palm. It was surprisingly light. Steve looked up at Tony questioningly.

“I think it’s going through a nuclear reaction to transform the very material its made of,” Tony’s voice came was as gleeful as that of someone recovering from an apocalypse could be, “And instead of giving off the radiation in the form of particles and energy - as it should- it stores it to reverse the reaction and form the shape it held before.”

Steve nearly dropped the bar. He was no mechanic, nor did he hold any PhD’s in quantum physics. But this was a breakthrough he was holding in his hands. That much he could tell.

“Hole mother of - Tony! You could do anything with this!”

Tony gave him another grin that lit up his eyes, “Including designing the helicarrier to have a transformer-esque build so it can be manta ray shaped when we’re gliding high over the skies and a sleeker shape where its wings are folded to the side to reduce drag for when we have to maneuver between skyscrapers.”

Steve smiled (Tony’s excitement was infectious) back at him, “That sounds amazing. How are you going to do it?”

Tony looked down at the bar in Steve’s hand abashedly. “I’ve figured out most of it, in theory at least.”

He plucked it out of Steve’s hand. “Banner will help me confirm the theories. And then we can work on putting it into practice.”

Tony turned away, towards his holograms, still fiddling with the bar. Steve wondered that the process of building back up a team they could all trust wouldn’t be too hard if Tony had decided to raincheck on their animosity and take a leap of faith.

In that case, they would have an easier time allying themselves with teams in Wakanda or Kamar Taj if they were united amongst themselves. 

Steve reached out to tap Tony on the shoulder, to tell him of the intelligence they’d received from Wakanda about energy signatures that they had found to be portals lasting well after the battle against Thanos.

Steve had barely scraped his shirtsleeve when Tony flinched. He watched as if in slow motion as Tony kneed a glassware drying track which led to broken glass beakers flying to ground in staccato crashes. It triggered Friday to send the armor to him. Soon, Tony’s body was engulfed in it. 

And Steve was frozen, rooted to the spot, his blood as icy in his veins as when they’d first pulled him out of the antarctic. His mind floundered in understanding, trying to assign blame to any external source, stinging when the only perpetrator to be found was himself.

This was so much worse than rock bottom, wasn’t it? Because Tony had been trying just now, putting conscious effort into patchwork of their fragmented friendship. But the distrusted was rooted deeper, it was subconscious, it only acted up when his back was turned and he couldn’t keep himself from reacting. 

Now Steve found himself to be the same tyrant of fear, the same bully he’d fought all his life against. 

His grief returned to him with vengeance even as his soul struggled against it. He felt worse than before, alarmingly alike to when he’d caught pneumonia after being cured of bronchitis, his body weak from assault. 

So when the armored form of Tony slid to sit on the ground, Steve mirrored it, reflecting his exhaustion in his motion. Tony popped open the faceplate, weary and a little desperate, “I think you should leave now.”

“No,” Steve was surprised when his voice came out quiet but firm, “ I don’t think so.”

“And why is that?” Tony’s voice pitched between frustration and anger, “ You think you can help? You’re the problem Steve!”

That- that was painful to hear. But Steve had been good at accepting his flaws. He exhaled slowly, unfurling the heavy weight in his gut, breathing away the poisonous memory of red and gold armor clanging against vibranium and cold fingers wrapped in leather, swallowing the taste of blood and electricity that came with it. “I’m the only help you’re going to get in this broken version of our world,” Steve said, matching truth with bitter truth, “And besides, you weren’t the only one hurt that day.”

“So what?” Tony ground out, pressing hard on the space above his heart where his arc-reactor was, “You’re just going to sit on the floor until I talk about all the ways we tried to kill each other and nearly succeeded? About how we were the **worst** thing to each other until a freakin’ delusional purple space alien with literally _infinite_ power and knowledge tried to wipe us out? You want to talk about how ugly it is that it takes evil manifest to make us see that we aren’t supposed to be _enemies_?”

Steve raised his eyebrows at Tony in a way that said _that would be a good place to start_.

After a few moments of silence, in which Tony grew increasingly agitated at his inability to move with Steve’s attention pinned on him, he threw up his hands in the air. 

“Fine,” Tony said as the nanobots disassembled from the shape of his armor, “You win. But it’s your turn first Captain.”


	11. Conferences and Group Hugs

They sat like that for nearly three hours, until Friday announced that their meeting was in ten minutes. 

Tony tried not to startle at the fact that he’d lost track of time. 

They hadn’t actually talked about their fight itself. They’d talked about everything else. Steve admitted Ultron hadn’t been entirely Tony’s fault and Tony admitted that Steve had good reason to be afraid of the Accords. There was a lot of argument. A lot of ‘Yes I did’ and ‘No you didn’t’. Also a lot of ‘Oh’s and ‘Is that why?’s. They explained events from their perspective and realized after the fact that they did owe each other justifications for their actions. Preferably beforehand rather than after. A tentative promise was made of fixing that gap in communication; they both knew the consequences of it being broken. 

They didn’t apologize to each other. Didn’t explain why it hurt when they weren’t trusted by the other person. They didn’t talk about what Steve did in Wakanda once Bucky went into cryo or how Tony felt like he had failed Peter when the boy tried to handle too much on his own. 

There was still a lot of ground to be covered.

Tony gestured to the space between them, “You know this isn’t going to be fixed in a day, right?” 

“I know,” Steve said as he got up from the floor stretching his back out, “I don’t expect it to.”

Tony nodded at him and held up a hand without thinking. Steve stared at it before wrapping his fingers around Tony’s and pulled him up. 

They both looked down at their joined hands in surprise before they let go, disentangling their fingers too gently for people who’d tried to bury each other once.

Much later, when Tony was by himself, reverse engineering the bar turned sword, he would wonder why that unspoked exchange hadn’t been awkward for them. But then, their lot thrived on weird. 

\---

“So,” Natasha asked once they were all seated and properly spooked by the knives she’s dug in the wall to get them to pay attention to her, “Anyone else have any recently acquired supernatural abilities they’d like to share?”

“I might have something,” Thor began gravely, which was unsurprising given his busted eye and missing hammer. 

“It’s best if I just show you.” That was less of what they had been expecting.

Because when Thor said ‘show’, what he really meant that he’d give each of them his memory of the events of Ragnarok and the subsequent fight against Thanos like a zip file for them to download and experience in a matter of seconds. Which, okay, Tony had already gone through all other reported first hand accounts to analyze Thanos’ strategy with Friday, but actually _witnessing_ it again from another perspective was a whole other monster.

When they were done living through it, they all had tears streaming down their faces. Thor looked alarmed, “I apologize sincerely for agitating you - these were not my intentions. I - I did not anticipate this impact of Asgardian magic.”

Bruce let out a strangled noise pressing the heel of his palms to his eyes, “It’s not your magic, you goof god. You shouldn’t have had to go through any of that. Especially not alone.”

Thor looked down to the floor, looking far more mortal in the face of his tragedy than he had any right to be. “None of us should have to have gone through _any_ of it alone. That we did anyway...”

"It was less than ideal," Tony said mildly. 

Then, in an event that took the icing on the cake for that day, Bruce hulked out in the meeting, being kind enough to move to the far wall before doing it so he only cracked the tiles he was standing on. 

The Hulk walked over to Thor, genuine sorrow in his face, and enveloped him in a hug that would have killed any human. 

But Thor only wrapped his arms back around Hulk. “I missed you old friend. You took your time coming out, huh?”

Hulk sniffed in response. He lifted his head to turn his head slowly, looking everyone in the eye one by one. “Group hug,” he announced in a gruff voice. 

Clint chuckled through his tears, and even Natasha cracked a smile as they all wrapped themselves around the Hulk and the Norse God. 

Tony broke the silence after the group cuddle started taking a toll on his nanotech-enforced-non-aging bones. “Say, do you think we should move this meeting to the common room? Conference tables aren’t really our style.”


End file.
